


knights & ninjas

by spideywhiteys



Series: 365 Days of Naruto AUs [17]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Accidental Dimension Hop, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Pre-Relationship, The Last didn't happen yet, fuuinjutsu accidents, hinata is precious and deserves the world and i will give it to her, naruto is not hokage yet, naruto is studying fuuinjutsu and no i don't take criticism, naruto once again dragging his friends into messes, naruto really loves hinata and shikamaru, set during the blank period, shikamaru knows too much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:46:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28820937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spideywhiteys/pseuds/spideywhiteys
Summary: Naruto has made training mistakes before. Everyone has! It's all about the learning process, after all. Except he's pretty sure that most of the time... that process isn't supposed to drag you and your two crushes into a different dimension.
Relationships: Hyuuga Hinata/Nara Shikamaru/Uzumaki Naruto, Hyuuga Hinata/Uzumaki Naruto, Nara Shikamaru/Uzumaki Naruto
Series: 365 Days of Naruto AUs [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086938
Comments: 6
Kudos: 64





	knights & ninjas

**Author's Note:**

> Day 17: Dimension Hop AU / Naruto + Shikamaru + Hinata

He smells lavender. Pine. Earthy, soft scents he knows like the back of his hand. The world returns to him slowly, one sense after the other. Grass and dirt beneath his hands and cheek, the sound of soft breaths and wind shaking tree branches—

Naruto exhales and comes back to himself.

_ Kurama? _

No answer.

Naruto opens his eyes and sees a spill of dark purple hair, a few strands caught in his fingers. There’s a heat at his back that smells of smoke and wilderness. Again,  _ familiar. _ Two bodies he knows, two bodies he knew before opening his eyes.

“Psst. Hinata.” He whispers, and gently pulls at the hair around his fingers.

She groans softly, consciousness returning gently. Naruto pushes himself up to a seated position, shifting so he sees both her and Shikamaru. The three of them are laid out in an area that looks as if a paper bomb has gone off. Radiating out from their position, dirt and grass is uprooted in a radius of at least fifteen feet. 

Naruto pinches Shikamaru’s cheek. “Hey, stop pretending to be asleep!”

The shadow user swats at Naruto’s hand, amber gaze blinking open to accompany the disgruntled expression on his face. “Five more minutes. I don’t want to think about the mess we’re in just yet.”

Naruto can’t exactly remember how they got here. He thinks he remembers breakfast — eggs and a bowl of cereal, since Sakura threw out his ramen stash just yesterday — and meeting Shikamaru and Hinata on the street. He’d been excited about something...something…

“The seals!” He shouts, scrubbing his hands so harshly through his hair his brain can feel it. “Did they backfire? Explode in our faces?”

Hinata sits up, holding a hand to her head. She shakes off the remnants of their impromptu nap, dark lashes fluttering as she focuses on the two of them. “Naruto-kun, Shikamaru-kun, I-I don’t think those seals did as we intended.”

“And I can’t hear Kurama!” Naruto wails, “What if he’s dead! Wait, lemme check—”

“Naruto-kun, wait—” Hinata gasps, reaching out a second too late as Naruto sinks into his mind and his body slips backwards.

Shikamaru grunts when Naruto’s weight thumps onto his torso. “Ow.” He mutters, completely monotone.

The world and its colors fade away as Naruto falls into himself. Water drips somewhere in the distance, echoing in the giant expanse of the seal. His feet traverse through the inch of water coating the ground, completely dry. The gates — the cage, towering bars wrapped in ink and paper — are wide open, the same as they’ve always been since the end of the war. Kurama’s hulking orange figure is curled up in a position of sleep, massive limbs folded around himself, tail tucked over his nose. His eyes are shut tight, and his chest rises and falls with steady breaths.

“Heyyy!” Naruto calls, water splashing at his feet. He walks into the cage, all the way up to Kurama’s head. “Kurama? Don’t tell me you’re napping right now! I’m having a crisis! A  _ crisis! _ Don’t ignore me! This isn’t about romance like last time!”

Despite his pleas and nagging, Kurama doesn’t wake. Not even when Naruto clambers up a huge paw, sinking his hands into fur and tugging on the strands. He even pulls at one of Kurama’s whiskers and pinches a giant eyelid. 

“This isn’t funny…” He tries one last time, blue eyes wide. “Are you playing a prank on me?”

Once again there’s no response. Naruto clenches his fists and—

Resurfaces.

Shikamaru hasn’t moved, allowing Naruto’s lax body to rest across him. Naruto pushes himself up with a bit of squirming and an elbow in the other man’s gut. He takes a more serious look around the area they’re in. It’s just a forest. A forest they’ve definitely put a bit of hole in. 

“Naruto-kun, is everything okay?”

Naruto frowns, “I don’t know. Kurama’s….sleeping? But he won’t wake up.”

“Like...he’s in a coma?” Hinata asks, brows furrowing  _ just _ slightly, her bottom lip trembling on the last word.

She’s cute even when she’s worried.

“...maybe? I don’t know what could have happened, though!”

Shikamaru sighs, continuing to lay on the ground like a log. “If the big guy is down for now, guess it’s up to us to think of something. What a pain. We can probably assume we’ve been teleported. Your old man’s seals were based on space-time jutsu.”

“So….” Hinata purses her lips, pushing a long strand of dark hair behind one ear. She glances between them, remnants of childhood shyness in the flush of her pale cheeks. “The question is  _ where?” _

“Hmmm.” Naruto crosses his arms and narrows his eyes, “Well, wherever we are, we can just go to the nearest city! If we’re in another Land, I’m sure the other kages won’t mind if we visit!”

Shikamaru looks pained. He looks like he wants to press his hands to his eyes, but he doesn’t, because to do so would be too much effort and it’s already so much energy to talk to Naruto to begin with. 

“No, Naruto,” he says, dry as the Suna desert, “I know you’ve made friends with the entirety of the human race, and probably those  _ not _ in the human race, but it’s still illegal for shinobi to enter other countries without proper paperwork. You know, if we aren’t on a mission  _ against _ that country.”

Naruto laughs sheepishly, “Oh, is it? Well, I’m sure they’ll let it slide.”

His two companions exchange a glance at his expense, but they look entirely too fond. Hinata hides a smile behind her fingers, dark lashes fluttering over lavender eyes, an ethereal vision under the glare of a sunny sky. 

The three of them stand, Shikamaru heaving himself up with exaggerated effort. The Nara scratches the back of his neck, sharp amber eyes glancing around as if the answers might be hidden in the trees. It’s not as if they’ve memorized every location in the Land of Fire, but they can tell by the types of trees what region they might be in. Naruto isn’t super great with that, but Shikamaru is the smartest person he knows.

Shikamaru is a lot of things.

The person he trusts to stand as his back, the person he wants to push along just as much as Shikamaru pushes  _ him _ along. The shadow and the sun; the mouth and the brain. Naruto knows he can be Hokage only if it’s  _ Shikamaru _ at his side — with his thick, tightly curled and spiked hair, black as the very shadows he manipulates, with his eyes like caramel and amber stones, tawny like a deer pelt. Shikamaru smells like cigarettes and they are always bags under his eyes no matter how much he sleeps. His head is heavy on Naruto’s shoulder when he naps half-way through paperwork. His cheeks are warm when he wakes and realizes what he’s done. His face is calculating when he sees that Naruto doesn’t mind. 

(When he sees that Naruto’s cheeks are burned red against the warm brown of his skin, against the golden strands of his hair.)

“First order of business is finding signs of civilization.” Shikamaru says, slouched with his hands in his pockets. He looks like he always has, like when they were kids and nothing made sense just yet — nothing needed to. Maybe it’s just Naruto who sees something else.

They start walking, with the sun high in the sky and nothing but time on their hands. If he’d figured out the Hiraishin like he’d been trying to, they’d be back by now. 

If he’d figured out the Hiraishin, they wouldn’t be here to begin with. It’s just his luck that his first sealing accident wasn’t something basic like singed eyebrows or an explosion — no, it had to be full on teleportation. With enough juice to send three whole people with every limb attached.

Well.

He’s glad for that, if anything. 

Hinata and Shikamaru walk a few steps ahead of him as he slows to get his thoughts together. They make an interesting pair. If Hinata is the moon, Shikamaru is the very earth itself. And Naruto is the sun. Three celestial bodies, orbiting each other.

Or something sappy like that.

It’s hard to put into words what he feels when he watches them walk side by side, both quiet and content, the occasional word shared between them. There’s a level of ease and comfort, a level of familiarity. Hinata has always been shy and awkward and pushed to the back. She’d clawed her way forward on her own, because no one else was ever willing to hold a hand out and show her the way. They’re alike in that way. Alike in the ways he wishes they weren’t, because he never wants anyone to feel the same kind of loneliness. Alike in the ways he’s grateful for, because he feels like they’re able to see pieces of each other's soul. 

Naruto wants to wedge himself between them and never leave.

“Naruto-kun, is something wrong?” Hinata’s soft voice drags him from his thoughts.

He flushes a bit and clears his throat. Shikamaru’s eyes look a little too knowing for his liking. Or maybe he  _ does _ like it. He likes everything about both of them, and he wishes they would feel the same.

_ Dammit, Kurama, you SUCK as a wingman! _

“Ah, it’s nothing! Really, Hinata—”

The thud of hooves against the ground interrupts his words. The cry of a horse echoes through the trees. The three of them immediately go on guard, shifting into defensive positions. Naruto tries his hardest, but he senses no real threat —

It’s as if there’s no chakra at all.

From between a grouping of trees, a troop of horses and their riders come into view. It’s like nothing Naruto has ever seen before. Metal glints, scattering sunlight that pierces through the treetop canopy. The armor is unfamiliar to their eyes, heavy and clunky in appearance. The horses look prepped for war, wearing odd metal armor of their own. Oddly shaped swords are strapped to waists, strange helmets conceal the faces of the riders —

The symbol of a lion looks to be pasted across everything. 

“Halt!” A voice from the front calls, and the entire group comes to a stop before the three shinobi.

The man leading them flips up a plate in his helmet to reveal sharp blue eyes and a strange moustache. “Travelers! State your purpose! These are the woods of His Highness, King Leonel! If your answers are not satisfactory, justice shall be dealt swiftly!”

“What the….are you guys seeing this?” Naruto whispers loudly.

“Oh geez,” Shikamaru grumps, sinking even further in on himself like he wishes he were a turtle. “I think this just got way more troublesome.”

Hinata can only nod. “I-I think we’re further from home than we thought…”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow / Support me on [Tumblr](https://spideyfoof.tumblr.com/) and let me know if you'd like to see more of this AU!


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